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The Watercooler ~ Federal Judge Spanks Governor Brown in Cali

Poor Governor Jerry Brown. He can’t get no support (tacky phrasing meant for affect) from the federal court in his efforts to end the court’s monitoring of the California prison system:

Treatment of 32,000 mentally ill inmates in California prisons remains seriously deficient, with staff and facilities shortages and a high number of preventable suicides, a federal judge declared Friday in rejecting Gov. Jerry Brown’s request to end more than 17 years of court monitoring.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton has been monitoring this situation from its onset — more than seventeen years ago — and rejected Brown’s view:

Brown’s insistence that prison mental health care now exceeds constitutional standards, after billions of dollars of expenditures, conflicts with evidence from an ongoing series of prison inspections, said U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento.

One would have to wonder just what the judge thinks he is accomplishing through continued monitoring of the situation. After all of these years, according to Judge Karlton, the prisons are still not providing adequate medical care — especially in the mental health arena — no matter what the courts rule. So, what’s the point?